Recent Developments in the Study of the Great European Witch Hunt

Recent Developments in the Study of The Great European Witch Hunt http://draeconin.com/database/witchhunt.htm[29/04/2011 17:19:15] Pagan Info Contents Optimized Tiles Original Tiles Pagan Info Articles Recent Developments in the Study of The Great European Witch Hunt by Jenny Gibbon s Since the late 1970's, a quiet revolution has taken place in the study of historical witchcraft and the Great European Witch Hunt. The revolution wasn't quite as dramatic as the development of radio-carbon dating, but many theories which reigned supreme thirty year s ago have vanished, swept away by a flood of new data. Unfortunately, little of the new information has made it into popular history. Many articles in Pagan magazin es contain almost no accurate information about the "Burning Times", primarily because we rely so heavily on out-dated research. Beyond the National Enquirer What was this revolution? Starting in the mid-1970's, historians stopped relying on witch -hunting propaganda and began to base their theories on thorough, systematic studies of all the witch trials in a particula r area. Ever since the Great Hunt itself, we've relied on witch hunters' propaganda: witch hunting manuals, sermons against witchcraft, and lurid pamphlets on the more sensational trials. Everyone knew that this evidence was lousy. It's sort of like trying to study Satanism in America using only the Moral Majority Newsletter and the National Enquirer . The few trials cited were the larger, more infamous ones. And historians frequently used literary accounts of those cases, not the trials themselves. That's comparable to citing a televisio n docu -drama ("Based on a true story!") instead of actual court proceedings. Better evidence did exist. Courts that tried witches kept records - trial verdicts, lists of confiscated goods, questions asked during interogations, and the answers witches gave. This evidence was written by people who knew what actually happene d. Witch hunters often based their books on rumor and hearsay; few had access to reliable information. Courts had less reason to lie since, for the most part, they were trying to keep track of what was going on: how many witches they killed, how much money they gained or lost, etc. Witch hunters wrote to convince people that witchcraft was a grievous threat to the world. The more witches there were, the bigger the "threat" was. So they often exagerrated the number of deaths and spread wild estimates about how many witches existed. Also, trial records addressed the full range of trials, not just the most lurid and sensational ones. But trial data had one daunting draw-back: there was too much of it. Witch trials were scattered amongst literally millions of other trials from this period. For most historians, it was too much work to wade through this mass of data. The one exception was C. L'Estrange Ewen. In 1929 he published the first systematic study of a country's trial records: Witch Hunting and Witch Trials . Focused on England, his work offered vivid evidence of how much data literature missed. In Essex County, for instance, Ewen found thirty times as many trials as any previous researcher. Scholars were basing their theories on only Dr a econi n' s Lair Pa gan Info Y A wenechen

Recent Developments in the Study of the Great European Witch Hunt

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